General: 8-Week Class Could Turn Taliban Into Soldiers

The American exit strategy from Afghanistan not only hinges on beefing up the local army and police. It also requires persuading “small t” Taliban to leave the insurgency and reconcile with the government. A leading U.S. general is pointing the way to tackling both problems at once.

In a conference call with bloggers this morning, Major General David Hogg, the deputy of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, said that a program to retrain former mujahideen as Afghan National Army commanders might serve as a template for bringing ex-Taliban into the Afghan military.

“If the mission comes up, and they say, we’ve got ‘little T’ guys that want to be part of the program, then what we would probably do is take our mujahideen integration course and modify [it],” he said.

But the proposal brings up all sorts of questions: Will Taliban make the switch? And if so, will they stay switched? And is an eight-week course enough to turn enemies into allies?

Right now, the course for former fighters against the Soviets lasts less than two months. Then, the ex-muj get jobs with the national army. It part, the program is meant to correct the ethnic balance within Afghanistan’s military; Tajiks have often dominated the officer and NCO corps. The mujahideen integration program — which has brought in a total of 1,662 former fighters — is supposed to address that by bringing former mujahideen commanders from the Pashtun south.

Hogg was careful to clarify that no Taliban reintegration program modeled on that course was in place — yet. “That is speculation on my part right now, because it has not hit the airwaves yet as far as how that would actually take place,” he said. “It’s being worked at a higher level.”

But it comes as the U.S. military and its allies press an offensive in Helmand Province, in parallel with an apparent effort to talk peace with certain key leaders of the Taliban. It’s not clear if that plan will succeed, but the detention of Taliban leadership (and the arrest of militant “shadow governors”) seems to be pointing the way to the possibility that some insurgents could switch sides.

More competitive pay could be one incentive. U.S. leaders have testified publicly that the Taliban pays some footsoldiers around $300 a month, but Hogg said a recent pay raise for Afghan soldiers — who now receive base pay of $165 a month, plus combat pay of $75 a month — had had “great effect” on recruiting overall.